SBC buys AT&T
SBC Communications buyout of AT&T runs counter to the federal anti-monopoly policy that broke up the Bell System in 1984. Regulators now think market forces should dictate telephone company ownership and control. Was then court forced divestiture really necessary? Could AT&T have been broken apart in a better way, gradually, according to competition, and not Judge Green's dictates? Most definitely yes.
The large mergers and acquisitions now allowed reduce a customer's conventional telephone carrier choices. But new technologies give us more total ways to carry telephone calls. Such as over the internet or on a cable T.V. system. The sad exception is wireless, with tacitly conspiring duopolies in many markets. Verizon or Cingular? Who cares? They charge the same. Let's get back to AT&T.
It's entirely possible the only thing needed to reduce the size of the Bell System were federal orders allowing immediate local and long distance competition. Instead we got 12 years of endless worry and wonder and wreckage, as the finest telephone system in the world was taken hapazardly apart. Might Western Electric still exist? Or a healthy Bell Labs? I don't know. But I do know a consistent policy on telco ownership, followed by succeeding administrations, is badly needed.